


Songbird Cottage

by sunspot (unavoidedcrisis)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bad Puns, Bad Weather, Developing Friendships, Gen, Injury Recovery, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-25 15:25:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10767039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unavoidedcrisis/pseuds/sunspot
Summary: 'Songbird Cottage' is not a code name.It's an actual cottage, there are birds there, and they sing. All. The fucking. Time.





	Songbird Cottage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LadyReisling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyReisling/gifts).



> Thank you for such a great inspiration, LadyRiesling. Working on this was a breath of fresh air for my soul. Hope it suits you okay. :) <3
> 
> Thanks to Bailey for the help and notes. And thanks to the damn birds in my yard. You cute little jerks scream a lot.

Something goes wrong during what's supposed to be a fairly routine parcel drop in Panama. 'No such thing as routine' is going to be carved into his gravestone, Clint decides.

"A broken knee. My knee, Barton. How the hell do I go on with a broken knee?"

"First off, stop trying to fucking stand on it. Stop, Romanov, just let me carry you."

Natasha mutters something under her breath about it being degrading and then something in Russian (in which Clint can only order alcohol, ask for the bathroom, and threaten to hobble someone, so he has no ideas), but she doesn't resist when he scoops her up.

"Bet you're wishing you were anyone else's partner right now," she murmurs. Even at such a low volume, he can tell her voice is tight. He's never busted his knee, so he can only imagine the pain she's in.

Clint focuses on putting one foot in front of the other. In the rapidly dimming light, all he needs is to trip over a root and send them both sprawling. He glances down at his feet and catches a glimpse of Natasha's right hand curled into a fist, fingers pale white from from the tightness of her grip.

"It's gonna be fine. You're okay," he tells her in an undertone.

They don't speak again until they're in the quinjet and headed back home. "Ice pack," Clint says, handing it to her out of the first aid kit.

Natasha has a string of curse words at the ready as she eases her pant leg up and surveys the swelling. "Thanks."

Clint sees her wince as the ice pack goes on and pats her shoulder. "Just twisted?"

"Hope so."

He goes to check with the pilot and co-pilot about ETAs and if they could speed it up a little. The pilots don't need telling twice, since they're all familiar with Natasha and no one wants to be in her bad books, especially if she is injured.

Injured. Clint doesn't even know how it happened. He's been injured plenty of times on the job, and even more times off the job, probably. But he's never seen Natasha with more than a papercut (though that had been spectacular because she knows _so many swear words_ and who doesn't swear when they get a papercut?).

"I didn't see what happened," he says, sitting back down next to her.

"You don't have to coddle me, Barton," she says. It sounds snappy, and it might be, because Natasha usually has excellent control over her tone. He chooses not to hear it that way, though.

"Wouldn't dream of it. Just trying to get the story straight for Fury."

She's quiet for a long moment, until she shifts the ice pack and wince-groans again. "Just twisted the wrong way, I think. So much for all my training."

"Your training taught you not to have knees? Anyone who has joints twists them the wrong way sometimes. Remember when I fucked up my wrist in Dushanbe?"

"My training was more than just training though."

Natasha has mentioned it maybe three times, always in passing, and always vaguely dark and fucked up enough that Clint has never pressed for details, even when Fury pressed him in the early days. Apparently she's told Fury a lot about her Red Room days, maybe all of it, and Fury had offered him her file back then, but Clint never wanted to pry. Certain things don't get better by talking about them, he thinks, and he trusts her to be a good enough partner that she'll tell him if there's anything he has to know that would kill him if he didn't.

"Still have knees," he says with a shrug.

Natasha laughs and Clint feels a little surge of affection for her. "You think Fury will put me out to pasture?"

Clint runs through a quick mental list of all the reasons she might ask that (she gives away zero hints). Maybe she's scared of what will happen, maybe she's relieved, maybe she just needs to know so she can plan her next step. He wonders if anything he says will help with whatever line of thinking she's got going on. He answers truthfully regardless. "I doubt it. You're the best we've got."

Then they're quiet until they get back to base.

* * *

Nick Fury catches Clint in the hall outside one of the training rooms.

"Agent Romanov says you carried her back to the rendezvous the other day," he says, with a look Clint has no hopes of ever unraveling.

"Yeah. Her knee looked pretty messed up. How's she doing now?"

"She's going to be fine, but she needs to stay off it for a while."

Clint nods. He knew she wouldn't be out for good. There's no part of her that would tolerate that. "Reassign me while she's out? I really don't want to babysit a fresh trainee though. I nearly quit after the last one."

Fury's look changes into something Clint recognizes. It's the little smirky smile he gets when he's about to deliver news he thinks is funny but is generally unpleasant for whoever he's giving the news to. "When was the last time you took a day off, Barton?"

"Uh… We don't really do that, do we? I mean, I have a few days between most jobs, and I was out for a week last year…"

"You were out for a week because the doctors thought you had a detached retina. Not exactly Club Med. Anyways, it's unrelated, because I've got another assignment for you and Romanov."

"You just said --"

"Songbird Cottage. You're on assignment for a month, minimum. Don't let me find out you're back early. Pack your sunscreen."

* * *

It starts out as a running joke, of sorts. 

"SHIELD owns a bunch of property -- for all divisions and projects, plus safehouses and strategic locations. It makes total sense." Maria Hill scowls at Clint over a stack of files she's holding.

"What kind of game are we running in a site that's code named 'Songbird Cottage'?"

Maria frowns in thought for a moment. "Oh, that? That's not a code name. It's actually just a cottage. I don't know the full story, but someone bought it back in the seventies and I think it's been used maybe four times? Something about the lake it's on..."

Then whenever Fury has something ugly for them, they joke about reassignment to the cottage project. Apparently, Nick Fury really does have ears everywhere.

Clint's driving because Natasha's knee is in a brace. She's got sunglasses on, slumped low in the seat, and she's got nothing to say. Her question from the ride back to SHIELD HQ is rattling around in his head as he takes the exit ramp off the highway and heads into the countryside. Natasha's probably thinking this is Fury's first step towards retiring her. It's not exactly logical, presuming she's also heard from the doctor that she only needs a few weeks off, but Clint has to admit it's probably what he'd be thinking, in her shoes.

"So, any ideas what this is about?" he asks, hoping some kind of dialogue will break what he feels is an awkward amount of silence (almost three hours since Natasha snapped the radio off when the DJ's patter got too annoying). Their destination is still two hours into the bush and it'll be dinnertime before they even get there and Clint's not capable of being quiet for that long.

"He said there'd be a dossier."

They'd never gone into an assignment without the dossier in hand and thoroughly researched. They seem to work well together with or without a plan, but it's always nice to have one or two, sometimes three. Once, six, but that was a very tense weekend in Nagoya that they would never repeat.

"And that's pretty weird, right?"

"Pretty weird," she agrees. Then it's back to painful silence.

So Clint's stuck hoping for an assassination attempt to foil. He's wishing for an enemy compound to infiltrate. He's praying for some mid-level thievery or a complex political cover up. He's hoping against hope that the cottage is actually an underground training bunker where he's going to get to learn telekinesis or something. Anything but an actual cottage where he'll have to spend time palling around with Natasha, who is probably very nice and maybe the best secret agent partner a guy could hope for, but is so distant and professional with him that he's kind of sure she hates him.

 _'Come on, international terror plot, don't let us down now,'_ he thinks, as he takes the next turn-off towards the lake.

* * *

Songbird Cottage is, in fact, a cottage. The dossier doesn't even contain an attempt at a cover up for the team-building, recovery vacation that Fury's sent them on. It's just a list of activities available to them, a list of supplies currently in the cottage, and a stern reminder from one of SHIELD's doctors that Natasha needs a minimum of four weeks rest and relaxation, plus her daily rehab exercises.

The cottage itself isn't bad. The old A-frame is rustic as hell, but at least it's structurally sound. Clint could survive out here with a lot less, though he's glad he doesn't have to. He briefly tours the cabin and checks out the view from the back window (a boathouse! That's definitely going to have some toys in it) and yeah, this could certainly be a worse gig.

Natasha huffs out a long sigh. "Ridiculous. He's babying me. And he didn't need to send you." She must see the look on his face because she sighs again. "I didn't mean it like that. I just meant neither of us had to come out here, and to force you to babysit me just seems cruel to you."

He shrugs. "I'm not complaining. It's like a paid vacation with jet skis. Plus it's only for a few weeks. We've had worse jobs to get through."

"Jobs, yeah. This is mandated relaxation."

"What, relaxation isn't your thing?"

She barks out a laugh. "Do I strike you as the type?"

"What's not to like? Sun-warmed sand, campfires with marshmallows, jet skis…" Right on cue, thunder rumbles overhead. "Okay, fire tomorrow."

"Plus the beach is just rocks," she points out. "And there's no marshmallows on the list here."

"... We've still had worse jobs, though. Right?"

* * *

He goes out to check before the rain decides to start in earnest. Worst fear: confirmed.

"There aren't even any fucking jet skis," Clint says, way more disappointed than he knows he should be. There's a nice looking aluminum boat and even if he doesn't know jack shit about outboard motors, but it looks decent enough. There's a long dock out over the worst of the rocks and near as he can tell, the closest neighbour is a mile down the shore.

Natasha's made herself comfortable while he was gone with a bag of potato chips and a chipped plastic tumbler of water. She's rereading the dossier. What for, Clint's got no guesses.

"Still excited for Project Cottage?" she asks, not looking up.

"I am resolute in the face of adversity," he tells her, reaching out to help himself to a chip. "Looks like we're in for a storm. Ew, salt and vinegar."

"You don't like salt and vinegar?" She gives him a disbelieving look, as if there's something wrong with _him_.

"Does anyone?" The wind is picking up outside. "Shit," he says. "I should run for our bags before it starts pouring. Nah, don't get up. I'll go."

She scowls at him over her subpar chips but he doesn't wait for the snappy retort.

"I know you're perfectly capable," Clint tells her when he comes back in with their two duffel bags. "I'd have offered if you had two legs, eight legs, or no legs. Now, do you want the main bedroom here, or do you want the loft?"

Natasha scowls again, because the ladder up to the loft looks precarious enough even without a sore knee. "The loft's all yours."

He shouldn't have teased, because now he's looking at the ladder a little more closely and yeah, it definitely doesn't seem like it's going to hold his weight. It's even missing a rung in the middle.

"Hope you don't have to pee in the middle of the night," she says, her sour look turning into a smirk. "That might be hard to navigate in the dark."

"Well, I'll have to see if I have ladder repair skills in addition to all my other skills, won't I?"

Clint seriously doubts he has any home repair skills worth talking about, but now he's got to scrounge some up or lose serious face. But the rain is starting to fall in sheets, washing over the huge front windows and hammering down on the tin roof. He's not making a run out to the shed where Fury's list indicated the existence of a toolbox until it lets up. He's tired from the drive and the noise of the rain and the wind is soothing. Clint drops himself none to gently onto the beat up old couch by the window to wait it out.

* * *

There are birds singing very nearby.

He fell asleep and slept straight through until morning, though judging by the pastel sky and the raucous birds, it's only barely morning. Clint sits up with a crick in his neck and a stiff arm from lying on it, but he slept more soundly than he remembers doing for a long time.

"I barely slept," Natasha says, as if reading his mind and immediately contradicting it. "Too quiet out here."

"I slept like an angel," he says.

"No, you snore."

"Angels can snore, too." He stretches, rolling his shoulders and ankles, waiting for the cracking sound. "Are we going to take turns cooking and shit, or…?"

"I don't cook," she says. "Well, toast. I can do the dishes though."

Clint would never consider himself a fantastic cook, but he knows more than toast, so it looks like he's nominated by default. "I'll cook if you fix the ladder," he counters.

She rolls her eyes, but nods. She pauses for just a second before going outside, and in that second Clint almost offers to go outside to fetch the toolbox for her, but he's pretty sure she's string him up by his feet, so he lets her do her own thing.

The kitchen is lacking in most things, but there's a gas stove and he's thrilled to see there's power for the fridge, though he didn't see a generator on their way in. Natasha confirms when she's back with the tools that there's a solar panel on each side of the huge, sloping roof.

Clint's impressed "Oh, amazing. No running water though."

"Outhouse is in the tree line."

"And I saw an outdoor shower down by the boathouse. It's like half roughing it, half classy magazine cabin." Clint's at peace with it and Natasha seems to be too, or else she's just looking forward to banging some nails around, because she walks away with a hammer in her hand and the barest trace of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth.

Natasha's done with the hammer noises about the time he's serving the food. She brushes some stray sawdust off her hands onto her jeans and lets him hand her a plate heaped with stir fry. "This looks good," she says. She tries a carrot without waiting for a fork and grins. "Oh wow, it is good. So you can cook. Cool."

"Do you think this was part of Fury's plan? Forced bonding so we learn about each other and become best friends or something?"

"Why, do you want to be best friends?" she asks. Clint swears Fury must give lessons on that unreadable looking with the slight head tilt because he's seen it on Fury, Hill, Coulson, and now Natasha.

"I don't think it's necessary for the job. I've never felt like we couldn't be friends, though. I guess I'm… neutral on friends?"

Natasha leans back on the bench, studying him closely with narrowed eyes. "I'm neutral on Monica, strong feelings about the rest of them though."

"Oh my god," Clint mutters, ducking his head and smirking into his plate. "Of course you do," he says, straightening up again.

"You wanna hear them, pal?"

* * *

They've been at Songbird Cottage for over a week now and a few things have happened. First, it's become annoyingly clear how the cottage got it's name. The birds start around quarter to five every morning and go until past dark. The first few days, Clint was ready to strangle each one of them personally, but now he's kinda getting into it. He's asked Fury to send a bird book with the next round of groceries. Natasha claims it's bird Stockholm syndrome, but he's caught her whistling back at them once or twice, so he'll be in good company when they welcome their bird overlords.

Secondly, they're getting along better than Clint could have imagined. They've always worked well together in the field, with complementary styles, an effective shorthand communication system, and similar pragmatic views on getting shit done right the first time, but this is obviously not fieldwork.

She's funny, in a really dry way that he's never really gotten before because they're often working undercover or under fire. She's smart as hell, which he'd already known, but now he's seeing in a way that isn't being used to subtly interrogate a mark, break into a maximum security black site prison in Latvia when she doesn't speak the language, or treat a snakebite during a hailstorm in the jungle (don't ask about any of it, please). And she brings out things that he doesn't even know he's got in him.

He's teaching her to cook, for example. Clint's never thought he has the patience for teaching, but there they are, in the kitchen, arguing over breakfast prep.

"Just eggs-ercise a little more caution and you'd stop breaking them."

"Seriously Clint, stop it."

"We'll try once more, just for the shell of it."

"We are _alone_ in the _woods._ They'd never find your body."

He laughs and wipes the sweat from his forehead with a tea towel. Standing in front of the stove is almost painfully hot, even with the breeze coming through every open window. "I think you're eggs-aggerating, but fine, I'll stop with the wisecracks. Wait, is that one? _Wisecracks_? Aw, nuts, I should have said I'd stop with the yolks."

Natasha cracks the last egg over his head and leaves him to clean up.

"You've improved," Clint says, once he's thrown a bucket of water over his head and joined her on the deck.

She's a juxtaposition. Slumped shoulders, sliver of shell stuck to her jaw, traces of yolk still on her shirt, and constantly flexing her wrists, like she does when she's gearing up for trouble, but there's a fire in her eyes and the crook of a smile. "Thanks. I feel useless though."

He tries to think of another great (or egg-cellent?) egg pun, but can't without forcing it too much and he's not that obnoxious. He'll settle for okay over great. "Hey, no one can make an omelette without cracking a few eggs. Don't worry, we'll get you there. Toast for breakfast, maybe?"

"Considering it's nearly noon and I fucked up every egg within a fifty mile radius? Yeah. Butter and jam?"

* * *

There's a run of impossibly hot, humid days. The first day Clint wakes up soaked in sweat and tangled in the bedsheets from tossing and turning through the oppressive heat. All the windows in the cottage are wide open in hopes of catching a stray breeze, but there's not even a stirring. Even the birds seem too hot to sing. There's barely more than a warble every few seconds instead of the normal tumult of every other morning. It would all be intolerable if the cottage wasn't immediately lake adjacent.

Natasha's out on the dock already, sitting with her legs off the edge, watching the sun rise over the far end of the lake.

"Surprised you slept so late," she says.

She offers him her glass of water and he takes it with a grateful smile that swiftly turned into a scowl. It was probably cold a few minutes ago, but now it tastes as warm and muggy as the air. "Me too. I hate the heat."

"Better than the cold and the ice."

"Barely."

Clint dives off the end of the dock, keeping it shallow because they don't actually know how deep the water is. He swims a few strokes out and then back, just clearing the sweat from his skin and the sleepy cobwebs from his brain. "I don't think I'm going to get out of the lake today. You wanna come in?"

She makes noises about changing into a swimsuit, because apparently swimming around in your oldest underwear just isn't in fashion anymore. Clint watches her walk back up the cabin and realizes he doesn't even know which of her legs is supposed to be the injured one. Maybe she really does have some kind of super fast healing ability like he's heard whispers about.

Clint's floating his back, watching all the pinks and oranges slide out of the sky as it turns to blue. It's hypnotic and so soothing, with the only noises being the distant birdsong he's grown so accustomed to and the occasional slosh of lakewater against the dock. He decides he's going to stay here for the rest of their assignment. Clint lets his mind wander, something he's not prone to doing, and just lets everything be quiet and away from him. This is the rest and relaxation they were sent up here for. He lets it flow over him.

He's dimly aware that there's a splash next to him and he turns his head just in time to see Natasha swim past him in the water, powerful arms blurring and legs kicking up sprays of water.

Normally, he might care that she's kicked water everywhere and disrupted the calmness he was enjoying, but it's too hot and the zen is almost overpowering. It's then that he thinks that maybe 'the zen' is actually a symptom of early heat stroke, so he ducks back under the water and swims after her.

Hours later, they finally pull themselves from the coolness of the lake to lie on the grass under the trees by the east side of the cottage. Clint's hungry, but way too sapped by the heat to even consider moving, let alone cooking.

"Hungry," he says, hoping Natasha will take pity on him.

"You're the cook, remember?"

"Too hot."

"So… Toast?"

"Ugh."

And that's all they're capable of doing for the afternoon. The sun finally starts to sink and it gets all of maybe three degrees cooler in the shade. They manage to scrape together the makings of a halfway decent salad and retreat immediately back outside to eat it.

Open air sleeping is the plan for the night. Even if it's barely cooler out of doors, at least they're available for any possible wind or rain right now, anything to take the edge off. Hell, Clint would even take snow. Bring on the global climate change, if it means not sweating grossly through another night.

The crickets start in earnest and there are still some birds who haven't given up on singing through the heat. It'd be nicer with some wind making waves on the lake, but it's starting to get dark enough to see fireflies and the effect is, well, fucking magical. Not that Clint would ever admit aloud to having that thought, but just being able to be here while it's all coming together is pretty cool. Oh. Maybe the heat's getting to him again.

"Did you know that most fireflies are carnivorous?"

"Dear God, Natasha, how is that a thing you say to someone right before they fall asleep? I'm going to be awake for month now."

"Goodnight, Clint."

* * *

No relief comes and they wake up to a heat no more pleasant than the day before. He slumps over the table while Natasha fiddles with the coffee maker. 

"Hey, didn't the mission dossier say something about a waterfall on this lake?" Clint asks, perking up when the thought strikes him. They haven't really explored much of the lake or surrounding area, or anything much past the cottage itself. Clint's also never driven a boat before.

Luckily, there's nothing besides cooking that Natasha can't do, it would seem. She gets the motor fired up and starts loading things into the boat before Clint's even made it all the way into the boathouse.

"Do we need at all that stuff?" he asks, eyeing the old lifejackets and the paddles.

"I'd hate to be without them," she says. "Just in case."

"Hey, is there fishing gear?"

 

"Probably. Check the cabinet. Are you big into fishing?"

"Oh, I'm angling to be," he says. When she just rolls her eyes dramatically, he sighs. "That was a great one. And no, not really. I like it until about the time I actually get a fish on the hook, then I just gotta let the guy go with a hole in his face."

Natasha nods. "I don't like worms," she says, by way of explanation as to why she's not searching for a rod and reel.

The lean metal boat sails over the water effortlessly, and Natasha looks so comfortable behind the wheel with her hair whipping around her face. Clint leans back in his seat and lets the wind cool him off.

Trees go whizzing by on the shoreline and they see cottages dotted here and there. It's well into the morning now and other people are up and about on the shore and a lot on the water. Everyone waves to them as they go by. _Everyone._

"Is this a normal thing?" Natasha asks when a pair of teens in neon kayaks hoist their paddles in greeting. Clint watches them laugh their way over the waves the boat makes as it blows by. Kayaking looks too much like work to be fun, he decides.

"I don't cottage much," he reminds her. "Maybe just a community thing? Or maybe we're just really, really pretty." He has a good view of her in profile from where he's sitting, and yeah, objectively, she's gorgeous. He'd politely wave at her any day of the week, even if she wasn't wearing a strappy one piece swimsuit and Jackie O sunglasses.

She glances over at him, catches him staring and smirks at him, or maybe it's just a smile. "Yeah, that's probably it."

They find a boat launch at the more popular end of the lake. There's way more activity at this end than there is way down where they are. Natasha's got to slow down a lot and weave in between all the boats and --

"Aw man, they have jet skis. I'm so jealous."

"Wanna tail them back to their place and steal the jet skis tonight?"

"Probably not in the spirit of the mission."

"Okay. The marina has ice cream."

"Ooh, that's definitely the right spirit."

* * *

There is a waterfall nearby, but it's not accessible by boat, says their new (very old) friend Eugene who works at the ice cream counter. They spend a long time hanging around in the air conditioning, nursing their desserts and letting (very old) Eugene tell them all about the history and geography of the area.

"Now, when I was your age, there was a year that the lake flooded real bad…" he goes on and on until Natasha points out that the wind is picking up and the sky is darkening rapidly.

"Oh yeah, supposed to be a bad storm today, I shouldn't have kept you so long. You kids get home safe now." Being called 'kid' is a little weird, but Eugene's like a hundred and forty so Clint will accept it.

They're only halfway back across the lake when the rain starts. Natasha floors it (Clint assumes there's a different word for it when you're in a boat, but she doesn't look like she's in the mood to answer questions on word choice right now) with a glare and the boat lurches forward.

Thunder rolls and Natasha doesn't even flinch. "If we see lightning, we go straight for shore. Until then, just hang on."

It's an uncomfortable trip back and they only see a few people still out, hurriedly ushering kids out of the lake or dragging oversized umbrellas down (even those people wave though). The rain is cold and the wind is whipping up some choppy waves. "Fucking unpredictable weather this time of year," Clint says, tucking the arm of his sunglasses down the front of his shirt. They'd cost him twelve bucks at a grocery store checkout counter and he'll sure as heck be sending Fury a bill for new ones if they get lost.

"At least it'll cool everything down. We'll be able to sleep tonight," Natasha points out. Clint jolts out of his seat a little when a wave hits the side of the boat at the wrong angle. He braces himself against the side with one hand and uses his other to scrounge around in the three inches of water in the bottom for a life jacket.

"Just in case the dingy goes down," he says when Natasha gives him a dubious look.

"We're almost there. I won't drown you." She sounds confident, because when does she not sound confident, but she's hunched down over the steering wheel and squinting against the rain. He's reminded briefly of nine hundred year old Eugene. 

Clint doesn't put the life jacket on, but he doesn't put it down, either. "Safety first," he reminds her. It's something she's found reason to tell him on basically every job they ever done, even when it comes out super patronizing. She once warned him about 'safety first' while they were at the metro station in Cuttack, like somehow he was going to shoot himself in the foot while boarding a bus. (She'd also probably remind him that the guy they were tailing at the time turned around on the bus and threatened them very up close and personally with a straight razor, but that's not even apples and oranges.)

By the grace of someone or something, they make it back to the boathouse before the storm fully hits their end of the lake. Moments before.

Natasha shuts off the outboard motor, which whines like it's been abused, and maybe it has, and Clint climbs out of the boat a little woozy when lightning illuminates the entire inside of the shed and the sound of thunder rebounds off the tin roof like a rock slide hitting it. The walls actually rattle a bit.

"Jesus H," Clint mutters, feeling his heart clench in his chest because whoa, overkill, Mother Nature. He feels Natasha's hand, warm and damp, slide around his arm. He looks to her and she doesn't look scared, exactly, because he thinks it would take the apocalypse to get actual fear out of her, but she doesn't look pleased or relaxed either.

"It's like, what, three hundred yards to the cabin? That's easy, I ran ten times that carrying you in Panama, didn't I?"

"You barely sauntered," she says, dropping his arm and flexing her wrists instead. Clint misses the contact for a brief second before he fully processes her words.

"Hey!"

"Race you?" And then she takes off at a dead run without waiting for his answer. Typical.

Clint's already soaked through and the lightning, while nearby, probably won't bother him now that they're off the water. He's got nothing to prove to her. He runs anyway and of course, she beats him by a country mile (which he didn't know was only about two hundred and fifty yards).

She's nowhere to be seen when he gets inside, probably mostly because there are no lights on. He lights the oil lamp on the kitchen counter. They've been using it at night instead of the overhead lights to save on power and for ambiance. Clint likes ambiance.

Natasha comes out of her room in dry clothes and a charming grimace. "Shouldn't have run like that," she mutters when he tilts his head questioningly.

"Oh shit, are you okay? Here, sit down."

It's a testament to either how far they've come personally or how uncomfortable her knee is, because she sits without even giving him a dirty look. "It's okay, just really stiff."

"Ice pack?" he offers before crouching in front of her.

"Is that your default suggestion to any injury?"

Not the response he'd been anticipating. "Why, do I offer you ice packs a lot?"

"You did before, when I first hurt it."

"Oh, maybe, I guess? Do you want an ice pack or not?"

"I'll just stretch it out," she says, waving him off. He watches her press her fingers into either side of her knee and extend her leg a few times before being satisfied and settling down.

A thought occurs to him. "You were hurting pretty bad, but you remember what I offered you?"

She gives him that carefully blank look, but for the first time, Clint thinks he can see something there. Maybe she's letting him see, or maybe he's projecting or wishful thinking, but she looks… fond? "You were very… a very good partner that night. We're forced to rely on each other a lot in the field and that was the first time I really felt like I could, you know, _rely_ on you."

"Not Mr. Razor Blade in Cuttack? I like, literally saved your life that day. What about the fire in Pocatello? Or remember the time that asshole pushed you out the window in Budaörs?" He has a list as long as his arm where she's relied on him to get them both out of trouble, and another list just as long where he's relied on her.

"No, I mean… Of course, all those times, but those were all on the job. We were out of danger and you carried me through the jungle to the rendezvous and offered me ice packs and followed up with Maria the next day to see how I was. That was all after the job. That's all I meant."

"Oh. Oh, well that's… Aw. Aw, that's cute!"

"You've ruined it. Forever. And you're dripping all over the place, could you go change please?" Natasha's really great at fake exasperation. He can tell it's fake because she's not even trying to hide her smile. She looks a lot fonder now.

"Too late, you already said how we're bestest best friends. I won't let you weasel out of it, Nat."

"Joey is the best Friend. Go change."

He throws on dry clothes up in the loft and only jumps a little when a tree branch rakes over the window like a giant claw. Thanks wind, you purposefully creepy little shit.

She's waiting for him at the bottom of the ladder and places a firm peck on his cheek when he jumps down from the second to last rung. Clint feels heat rising in his face that is unrelated to the dry track pants and Rush tee shirt he just put on.

"I like Nat," she says. "I've never had a nice nickname before. You can keep calling me that. Popcorn?"

It's a better dinner than anything he could come up with, what with the way his mind is spinning and he can't wipe the smile off his face. Clint turns down the oil lamp while Natasha slightly chars the stovetop popcorn and they watch the lightning over the lake until the storm fades and the fucking birds start singing again.


End file.
